News from around the world
Hundreds of Dutch farmers have been protesting against calls to curtail nitrogen emissions from the farming sector. The government is being urged by MPs and NGOs to come up with a more radical plan for reducing emissions, including halving the country’s livestock population. WWF has previously called for a 40% cut in cow numbers in the Netherlands, saying the sector had outgrown its ability to safely dispose of its waste. Meanwhile, outgoing EU agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan has said farmers should be paid to cut carbon emissions.
The EU is to impose hen welfare standards on egg imports from Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay under the new EU-Mercosur trade agreement. It is the first time the elimination of tariffs have been conditional upon particular animal welfare standards being upheld.
The US is eliminating production line speed limits at pig slaughterhouses despite fears it will worsen the already high number of serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers. Amputations, fractured fingers, second-degree burns and head trauma are just some of the serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers every week, according to an investigation last year by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
McDonalds has joined Burger King in offering plant-based alternatives to customers. It will test consumer appetite for plant-based burgers in 28 restaurants in south-western Ontario, Canada.
News from the UK
UK farmers can reduce their net carbon emissions to zero within the next 20 years without cutting cattle numbers, farmers have said. The National Farmers’ Union said this could be achieved by allowing farm emissions to be offset through the growing of energy crops, among other measures. Agriculture is responsible for an estimated 10% of the UK’s climate-heating emissions; of which 90% is methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from fields.
Scottish researchers have also started a three-year programme to breed sheep that produce less greenhouse gases.
Some of our biggest supermarkets are struggling to avoid deforestation in their supply chain, as they source animal products from UK farmers using animal feed that includes soya from Argentina. About 14% of Argentina’s planted soya is in the north of the country, where deforestation has laid waste to huge areas of the Gran Chaco forest. A Guardian investigation reveals how the meat and dairy on our dinner plates is driving an environmental crisis in one of the world’s most threatened forests.
Converting farmland into wildlife parks could boost landowner’s profits post-Brexit, rewilding campaigners say, and make up for the loss of EU subsidies. Instead of beef and sheep farming, landowners could graze wild cattle or deer and create opportunities for “nature tourism”.
From the Guardian
Populations of the UK’s most important wildlife, including hedgehogs, the turtle dove and the high brown fritillary butterfly have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970. The State of Nature report described the UK as “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world”, blaming the intensification of farming, pollution from fertiliser, manure and plastic, the destruction of habitats for houses, the climate crisis and invasive alien species.
Quote of the month
“We know more about the UK’s wildlife than any other country on the planet, and what it is telling us should make us sit up and listen,” said Daniel Hayhow of the RSPB, the lead author of the RSPB’s State of Nature report.